1) At this point, do you think the Senate will pass health care in 2009? What if it doesn't? (Bonus high school civics question from my teenaged son: Why does Congress turn chicken in election years anyway?)

2) What does Obama accomplish by calling bankers "fat cats?"

Send to a friend1) At this point, do you think the Senate will pass health care in 2009? What if it doesn\'t? (Bonus high school civics question from my teenaged son: Why does Congress turn chicken in election years anyway?)2) What does Obama accomplish by calling bankers "fat cats?"

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It's still possible that the Democrats will get something through--legislative desperation is the political equivalent of "beer goggles"--anything, no matter how bad, will look good enough to pass in the wee hours of a waning session.

But we know how this story will end, because we have been down this road before--and not just in 1993-4, as hubristic Hillarycare self-torpedoed the Democrats' Congressional majority. We also went down this same road back in 1977, when another Democratic president with a big Congressional majority, Jimmy Carter, pushed an energy bill that was animated by a "scarcity" worldview similar to that of the the healthcare policy-pushers of today. Carter was gone in the next national election, and so was the Democrats' effective control of Congress. And of course, proving that no bad idea ever goes away, the sweater-wearing Carterites of the energy-hungry 70s are today pushing an updated version of "malaise," in the form of cap-and-trade.

Thus a dreary progression: 1977, 1993, 2009. In each case, neo-Malthusian experts, pushing a chilly platform of "limits to growth" and locked into a technophobic contempt for win-win solutions, convince themselves that ordinary people are getting too much, and that what America, and the world, need is rule by elites, who will do their duty by redefining the common good. Needless to say, the voters--including most Democrats--don't appreciate such elitist condescension.

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